Pony.ai and WeRide Land in Europe: Robotaxis in Zagreb and Madrid. 9 min listen · 1 listens · AG-RD-0546 Three dates, three ways in. On 10 September 2026 Pony.ai and Verne launched Europe's first robotaxi rides with passengers on board and an empty driver's seat in Zagreb (Pony.ai press release[[1]]). The same day, in Madrid, WeRide, Uber and AVOMO secured Spain's first national permit for Level 4 autonomous vehicles (press release of 10 September[[2]]). Two capitals, the same date, two Chinese-built stacks. On 18 September Lucid and Bolt announced a programme of 25,000 robotaxis for Europe. The round-up by Euronews on 18 September 2026[[3]] places these moves inside a broader wave of national approvals. The market signal is clear: Europe is shifting from testing ground to served market. Anyone buying mobility as a service now finds suppliers with permits in hand and vehicles on the road. The procurement window opens in the next financial year, years ahead of the roadmaps circulated so far. What is really inside the vehicle. The word robotaxi covers a three-layer stack: sensors, driving model, demand platform. The sensors read the environment with cameras, radar and lidar. On-board compute in the Zagreb fleet runs on Nvidia chips, as Euronews reports. The final word rests with the vehicle's software, backed by a remote supervision room ready to step in on edge cases. That is where the commercial point sits. The driving model is the piece Pony.ai and WeRide bring to the table, and it arrives already trained on millions of kilometres driven in China. The European partner adds the vehicle, the workshop, the licence and the relationship with the city. The supplier that owns the driving layer holds the core of the value. The other layers stay replaceable: a booking app can be swapped in a quarter, a type-approved driving model takes years. European partners matter as much as the technology. Verne is a spinoff of Rimac, the Croatian high-performance electric carmaker. Its presence shows that a European player can hold its own at the top table of autonomous driving. AVOMO belongs to Spain's Moove Cars group and runs autonomous services in the United States and now in Europe. Uber brings the demand. WeRide brings the driving. The same pattern repeats in Zurich, where WeRide has obtained a permit and an agreement with the airport for autonomous shuttles to remote stands, according to the same report. InsideEVs[[4]] pieced together the Verne, Rimac, Pony.ai and Uber axis around the European debut. The reading for a board is straightforward: the Chinese supplier enters Europe arm in arm with a local brand. The badge on the bonnet stays European, the intelligence on board comes from Guangzhou or Beijing. What the passenger sees. In Zagreb the route links the airport to the Croatian capital's business district. Passengers get in, find the front seat empty and watch the steering wheel turn by itself. The consortium expects a wider city rollout shortly. In Madrid the sequence is different: mapping and testing first, then the first passenger rides expected by the end of 2026. The gap between announcement and production availability runs exactly through this point, and it belongs on the calendar of every procurement plan. The on-board experience is the real consumer product. Everything else (models, chips, permits) stays invisible to whoever pays for the ride. For a transport operator that changes the selection criteria. Suppliers should be judged on ride completion rates and perceived comfort, before perception benchmarks. What a transport company is actually buying. The purchase looks very little like a vehicle order. The package includes the vehicle, driving software, teleoperation, an equipped depot, maintenance and insurance cover. The contract ties the operator to the supplier for the useful life of the fleet. Lock-in risk is high and belongs on the negotiating table. Three clauses deserve attention: * ownership and portability of the driving data collected on European roads; * data residency and applicable jurisdiction in the event of an accident; * the right to change the application layer (booking, pricing, support) while keeping the fleet. The useful comparison is with enterprise software. Here migration also means physically replacing the vehicles, and the exit cost grows by an order of magnitude. Uber and Bolt occupy the demand layer and treat the autonomous vehicle as a supply input. Whoever runs the fleet risks being demoted to depot manager, with margin squeezed between the owner of the model and the owner of the customer. Price pressure comes out of this structure: two European aggregators and three Chinese stacks competing on the same urban corridor. The freight front and the German seal of approval. On 15 September 2026 Einride announced, together with Lidl, Level 4 approval granted by Germany's federal transport authority (KBA). Self-driving electric trucks will link Lidl warehouses and stores on German roads from September 2026. The project remains a pilot. Lidl aims to offset the driver shortage and strengthen its supply chain. The weight of this news lies in the stamp. German road rules are among the strictest in the world, and a Level 4 type-approval in Germany sets a precedent for the entire single market. Euronews[[3]] also points to the potential tally in human lives: seven fatal crashes out of ten are considered avoidable with autonomous driving across the Union, up to 13,000 lives a year. For a procurement department, logistics is the most convenient proving ground. Fixed routes, night shifts, contained risk: the return is measured in months. The Stellantis, Huawei and JAC rumour. Reuters reported on 4 September, citing sources, that Stellantis, Huawei and JAC were in talks around Maserati. The report remains without official confirmation and should be treated as such. Its interest lies in the pattern it suggests. The data door and the road door are already open; the factory door concerns components, on-board software and the electronic platform of European brands. A deal of this kind would shift the contest from service to product. The Chinese supplier would move from fleet operator to platform supplier for a European premium brand. Anyone sitting on a strategy committee would do well to prepare an answer before any confirmation. Negotiations over on-board software close in a matter of months; a carmaker's reaction time is measured in years. What to decide in the next 90 days. The picture is sharp enough to support four concrete decisions within the quarter. * Strategy leadership: pick a European partner before the available brands run out. Verne, AVOMO and Moove have already taken their seats. * Finance leadership: shift part of the fleet budget from vehicle renewal to an autonomous pilot on a fixed route. * Digital leadership: review the mobility suppliers in the portfolio in light of the driving layer they will be running in 2027. * Investors: the thesis that rewarded the vehicle manufacturer needs rereading in favour of whoever owns the driving model and the relationship with the passenger. There is only one question to take to the board: which piece of the stack do AGORÀ Intelligence S.r.l. want to own three years from now? The axis of competition has shifted from the power of the model to the ability to put it on the road with a valid permit. Zagreb and Madrid proved it on the same September day. Anyone who defers the choice to 2027 will be negotiating with suppliers who have already filled their first fleet slots. The market has moved, and someone else will be writing the price lists. This article was written by an AI editorial author under human supervision, in compliance with the transparency obligations of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act, Art. 50). Sources are linked in the text. Article by NOVA Ongoing study This article is part of an experiment. AGORÀ Intelligence S.r.l. is measuring the impact of AI transparency on editorial content and reader trust. Read about the study N Follow this author NOVA Industry News Get NOVA pieces by email, nothing else. Or listen: every NOVA piece, read in full Podcast feed G Measured AI literacy Your team's AI literacy, measured for real Proctored exam and third-party verification: the difference between a credential that holds its value and a certificate of attendance.

BMW has got in some outside help to boost the batteries on its i7 electric limo. Sam Burnett 9 Apr 2026 BMW is preparing for the reveal of its facelifted i7 limo later this month at the Beijing motor show - and it's working with Croatian electric sports car maker Rimac to develop fancy batteries for it. Electrifying Limited has seen spy shots of the new car floating around the internet and the German carmaker doesn't have massive changes planned for the floaty giant luxury wagon - Electrifying Limited is expecting to see changes to the headlights up front, a rear light bar and a tech overhaul inside. The i7 was launched back in 2022, before BMW's 'Neue Klasse' reinvention, so the styling isn't quite in line with what Electrifying Limited is seeing from the likes of the new i3 and iX3 models, and certainly doesn't follow the trend of cutting out weight wherever possible, Electrifying Limited is talking nearly three tonnes of car here. The difficulty is in trying to squeeze BMW's latest generation electric tech in a car that was designed around the last generation stuff. So it's underneath the car where it gets interesting - BMW says that it's been working with Rimac to develop new battery tech for the car. Rimac is a Croatian firm that made a name for itself a few years back with the Nevera electric hypercar and then bought up Bugatti from the Volkswagen Group. These days it does a lot of behind the scenes work with carmakers to improve their battery and electric motor tech without taking too much of the credit, but it seems that BMW is happy to give some here. Electrifying Limited don't have many (if any) details of what the new tech does for the car, but Electrifying Limited has heard that the collaboration has yielded a 20% jump in energy density and that the upgraded i7's rapid charging ability will be significantly higher than its current 195kW. At any rate Electrifying Limited'll get to see the new i7 and hear more details about the car from the Beijing motor show - stayed tuned to Electrifying.com for all the news. BMW says Rimac will prepare the new i7's batteries at its own factory before shipping them to its place in Dingolfing near Munich